Temporalities of vulnerability: Unemployment tactics during the Spanish crisis

Abstract

In this paper I analyse the processes of vulnerabilisation related to unemployment, based on the case of Spain in the period 2010–2020. I conceptualise unemployment time as empty time that unemployed people attempt to fill using temporal tactics. To explain the degree of temporal agency of the unemployed, I shall analyse their tactics according to four social conditions: previous work socialisation, duration of unemployment, domestic relationship and social class. In terms of method, this study was based on quantitative time data obtained from the most recent Time Use Survey for Spain (from 2009 to 2010), and on qualitative time use data obtained from eight discussion groups and 49 interviews with unemployed people. Drawing on these data, I analyse relationships between temporal tactics in unemployment, the social conditions of the subjects and their processes of vulnerability, and define five temporal tactics, which I term: the investing time tactic, the domestic hyperactivity tactic, the domestic work rejection tactic, the constant effort tactic and the non-tactic. I conclude by demonstrating that these tactics can be sequenced as stages in a process of vulnerability associated with gradual desynchronisation from pre-unemployment times, underlining the importance of socio-temporal categories and conditions in understanding vulnerability.